Insights From Our Consultants

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In the world of nonprofit communications, few things are more powerful than a community member’s story. Nonprofit organizations frequently use first-person accounts to illustrate the need for, or impact of, their programs. A story is powerful in a different way than a...

Effective social programs and their evaluation require a shift in perspective. This is especially true when addressing complex issues like homelessness. Traditional evaluation models that measure the impact of an intervention often place the burden of change solely on...

In the fast-paced world of social interventions and community programs, it's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day implementation and lose sight of the bigger picture. One of the most powerful tools in our evaluation toolkit is something deceptively simple:...

Remember that time you called your doctor’s office and you got the hospital’s automated voice system. You landed in a type of purgatory where even if you pushed “0” for the operator, you might or might not get a human being. Well I landed there in a recent issue with...

The final post in this series addresses another sacred cow. Over the course of my 34 year professional nonprofit career, I have constantly heard “it’s the Board’s job to design the strategic plan.” It’s time to rethink this and get clarity about the Board’s role in strategic planning.

One of the key elements in any strategic planning process is to engage stakeholders, especially those who may be service recipients at a human services organization. As we engage the community, we do not want to 1) set expectations that will not be met and disappoint...

In the last blog, I challenged the usefulness of a SWOT analysis. However, there are some really useful tools that can be alternatives to a SWOT analysis. These ideas are really designed for organizations to create more insightful, responsive strategies by surfacing...

Oh the SWOT Analysis. You know the exercise. It is done in a board/staff retreat at the beginning of a strategic planning process. A facilitator draws a two-by-two matrix and labels each quadrant with the following titles: Strengths, Weaknesses,  Opportunities and...